I was in seventh grade. Band practice was just beginning in the band room and I was getting my trumpet out of its case. The principal came on the intercom and told us that the President had been shot and killed. We lived in a rock-solid Republican suburb in Seattle where Kennedy was very unpopular, but I saw many people--children and adults--crying that day before my Mom came and picked me up. My parents were Democrats. I had watched the Democratic convention on television with them three years earlier. My folks had been big supporters of Adlai Stevenson. A spontaneous demonstration of support for Stevenson erupted on the convention floor. I asked my parents if this Stevenson character was the same guy who Eisenhower had buried in the past two elections and they said that he was. I liked this Kennedy guy. President Eisenhower seemed like an ancient, mumbling relic, and this Kennedy dude was young, handsome, smart and energetic. The hell with this Stevenson has-been, I thought. Time to back a winner. I went in my room, grabbed some cardboard, wrote “Kennedy” on it in big black letters with a felt pen, taped it to a ruler, and rejoined my folks in the living room, where I paraded back and forth in front of them with my homemade campaign sign. I’m sure I cried too on November 22, 1963. I still remember the unbelievable, crushing sequence of events over the next few days—the President’s body landing in Washington DC accompanied by Jackie and the Johnsons, the capture of Oswald, the murder of Oswald on live television, the funeral cortege and the shattered Kennedy family. There’s never been another week like that one.